Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Standards I present the committee's final report, and I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with that report.

Leave granted.

As chair of the Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Standards, I appreciate the opportunity that the House is providing me to speak on this report and the codes of conduct that we have proposed.

Recent reports of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault in our parliament have justly shocked the nation and highlighted the need for urgent reform to ensure all parliamentary workplaces are safe and respectful places to work. Codes of conduct are a crucial part of that reform; they set clear and consistent standards of behaviour which will in turn help hold everyone to account.

The Australian parliament has long sought to address the issues of codes of conduct. Indeed, our parliament has been considering codes of conduct for almost half a century. In 1975 a report on declaration of interests noted that a meaningful code of conduct should exist in the Australian parliament. In 1993, 2008, 2011 and in 2012 the Australian parliament again tried and again failed to introduce codes of conduct.

The need, and the public expectation for codes of conduct, has grown over the years—and now the 47th parliament has a unique opportunity to make good on past mistakes and leave a legacy for future generations of people who work in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces. With over 4,000 people working in Parliament House on any giving sitting day, and thousands more working across the country in our electorate offices supporting us as parliamentarians and our constituents, all Commonwealth parliamentarian workplaces must be safe and respectful places to work. We owe it to the Australian people and, importantly, we owe it to everyone who has shared their story of not feeling safe in a parliamentary workplace. We owe it to them to get this done, we cannot waste this opportunity.

As the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, said in her Set the standard report:

This is an opportunity for the leaders of our country to transform Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces to become what they already should be: workplaces where expected standards of behaviour are modelled, championed and enforced, where respectful behaviour is rewarded and in which any Australian, no matter their gender, race, sexual orientation, disability status or age, feels safe and welcome to contribute.

These codes are just part of the work that this 47th Parliament is doing to deliver safe and respectful workplaces. I do want to note that this week we also celebrate the passage of the first report that Kate Jenkins as Sex Discrimination Commissioner delivered to this Australian parliament, and we have now passed the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Bill through this parliament. That is good news, because everyone has the right to a safe and respectful workplace, and the fact that workplaces have not been safe and respectful for many Australians is unacceptable. But these codes of conduct now are our opportunity to ensure our workplaces are also safe and respectful places for everyone to work.

The scope and responsibility of this committee was unusual in many ways. Not only were we tasked with considering how codes would work, what other jurisdictions have done and the applicability and enforcement of codes; we were also asked to draft the codes of conduct for parliamentarians, for parliamentarians' staff and for parliamentary workplaces to ensure safe and respectful behaviours.

The behaviour code for Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces has been drafted to apply and be available to everyone who works in and visits our workplaces. This includes parliamentarians, their staff, departmental staff, the press gallery, our contractors, lobbyists and visitors. It is an all-encompassing code.

The committee considered the sensitive nature of the issues under discussion and acknowledged that the implementation of proposed behaviour codes would impact on stakeholders in our workplaces. We also knew that broad support of the codes across the parliament was necessary to ensure that our proposed codes of conduct would help drive the long-term cultural change that we all seek to find. For this reason we ensured a wide range of consultation was available to everyone.

The committee received 45 public submissions. The submissions were comprehensive and detailed, and we're indebted to the people and organisations who took the time to provide such high-quality evidence and advice to the inquiry.

We held public and private hearings as well as focused group discussions over five public hearings and three in camera hearings, gathering some 40 hours of evidence from a wide range of individuals, organisations, parliamentarians and staff across Australia.

The committee also provided the option for stakeholders to give their feedback by completing a confidential online survey. The committee received 547 responses to this survey.

I truly appreciate the effort made by those who contributed to that online survey but also those who made written submissions, gave evidence at hearings and provided feedback on the drafts of proposed codes of conduct.

I'd also like to thank the secretariat, especially committee secretary Tas Larnach, principal research officers Kate Gauthier and Chiara Edwards and senior research officer Trish Carling.

I want to also pay tribute to my deputy chair, Senator the Honourable Marise Payne, and to all the committee members. I'm going to name those that I see in the chamber now. Thank you to the member for Lalor, the member for Bean and the member for Forrest, who participated each and every step in this journey. It was hard work, it was intense work and I couldn't be more grateful for the consensus way in which we took our decision-making seriously. As I said, the committee was able to reach a consensus. The fact we were able to do so should give this parliament every confidence to move forward with these recommendations. I implore the Australian parliament to take this opportunity to set in place what previous parliaments have failed to do and to adopt these codes of conduct to help shape a safe and respectful workplace for all those who work in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces across our nation. On behalf of the committee I commend this report to the parliament.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—As a member of the Parliamentary Standards Committee I too want to acknowledge what's gone into this work. Given that the chair has outlined the work, I won't go back over that. But I would like, in this instance, to acknowledge the work of the chair. The chair has recognised that there was a power of work done on this and it was intense. The reflection of the consensus that was reached is, in great part, due to the work of the chair, and I thank and commend her for that work. I also acknowledge that this is a very important report. All of us who are part of that committee were certainly impacted by the evidence that we received in its various forms.

I really want to thank all of the witnesses and those who gave evidence, in any form and any submitter, for the courage they had to report to us and give us the information that we needed to come to this report and the recommendations in it. It wasn't easy for those people, at all, and we understood that, I think, as a committee. There was a very compassionate approach to the work that we undertook and an understanding of the people that we were meeting. A safe and respective workplace is certainly something that we all supported and endorsed through this report.

I also want to thank everyone who was involved in this for the amount of work involved—and I think none of us underestimate what was involved—and the work that was done to establish the code itself. I want to thank everyone who was part of this, not just the chair but the deputy chair as well, Marise Payne, who did an extraordinary amount of work. None of us would underestimate the amount of work done by the deputy chair. I want to thank each of the committee members and acknowledge the amount of work, dedication and commitment they put in to get this right and to work with each other to do so. So to the other members present, I thank each of you as well for your willingness to engage and come to the best outcome that we could possibly get, one about clarity and safe and respectful workplaces through the code itself.

The witnesses and submitters, I have thanked. The secretariat also had a very intense process to deal with and much was required of them, particularly in the latter parts, as we were bringing this together. I also really appreciated, as other members did, the advice we received from other jurisdictions that sought to introduce codes themselves. I found that invaluable, in my deliberations and consideration of this work.

This is a significant piece of work and I really wanted to acknowledge and thank all of my colleagues and everyone who's been part of this from the beginning until this point. I thank the chair, in particular, for the work that she's done in this process.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.